"You are speaking to the 50-year-old Tom who appeared in front of 10,000 people and played hundreds of concerts. But I had an extremely difficult youth; I was beaten up every day at school, I grew up with hygienic conditions that shouldn't be described on camera , and had a mother who literally descended into insanity. And this very mother comes and says, it's the phone, a Mr Giger. Unbelievable. It's a moment I will never forget."

"I think that finally it's a mirror he is holding up to us, a mirror to the soul which is perhaps more highly defined than many a mirror. Naturally it polarises. Sigmund Freud would say that it's where the strongest negativity or counterreaction is that the problem is to be found. It's something of a simplification, as we know today. But there may be a similarity, anyway: an observer who stands in front of a Giger painting and legitimately says, it is repulsive, I cannot bear it. That's where one might say we‘ve hit the mark."

"That's what always impressed me most about him, that it's totally non derivative. Many of his inspiration came from his extensive reading and also from music. But that's just a tenuous influence. When you know that Giger's favorite music is jazz, well, could you see jazz in his paintings?"

"Lots of people think he must be a really odd guy you can't make contact with. But he's totally open. Somehow it goes together: the absolutely nice, friendly, decent, reserved guy with integrity who is never brusque - and his artwork."

"I call Hansruedi a visionary, because he portraits accurately certain dark areas, that we all have, that are related to the trauma of birth, which we have never consciously processed. He also uses what Jung would call archetypal images, those are not ordinary images of every day."

"He has worked a huge amount. In the 60s and 70s he was pretty much at his easel day and night. If you look at his big airbrush pictures, they are incredibly detailed and filigrane. He would work for weeks almost without interruption until he was satisfied. He is a typical Swiss: a grafter, a hard worker."